Thursday, 1 September 2011

There's a typhoon about to hit as we reach episode nine of Usagi Drop - and no, I don't just mean that Kouki is visiting again, although that is part of the impending natural disaster I suppose.

In fact, Kouki gets quite a lot of the attention throughout this episode, as we see him being generally boisterous around Daikichi and both boisterous and work shy at school as an opportunity to draw outside turns into a hat-throwing competition rather than doing anything more artistic. Boys will be boys, of course, but there's a suggestion that Kouki is rather isolated from many of his classmates due to his behaviour and his tendency to have a short temper when he's told not to do things - a temper, it seems, from which Rin is immune as she bosses him about wonderfully with impunity.

With the typhoon drawing closer and bringing with it heavy rain and high winds, Daikichi does his best to pick Rin up from school early, but circumstances mean that (as usual) he's last - well, next to last after Kouki's mother at least, which leads to him eventually suggestion that he may as well look after said youngster until Nitani manages to get away from work herself. This rather handily leads to an evening spent at Daikichi's house with Nitani and the two kids, with Daikichi pondering how well Kouki gets on with his mother while we perhaps get to see what both children are missing from living in single parents families.

As expected from our weekly dose of Usagi Drop, what we have here is a fun, entertaining and relaxing outing that nonetheless has some important points to make and questions to raise about bringing up a child, whether it's the financial, the emotional or the psychological. All of this is done in a way that is decidedly subtle and not the least bit heavy-handed, so you don't have to fret about the bigger questions here if you don't want to, while you're equally as welcome to delve into them at length in your head if you so wish. It's this deft, light touch that makes Usagi Drop such a thing of beauty - the only downside is that it really doesn't feel like we're going to reach any kind of conclusion come the end of this series with only two episodes now left to run.